Live reading of Elaine Acworth’s My Father’s Wars

My Father’s Wars is the story of playwright Elaine Acworth's search for her father in the trenches of the Western Front, and a young man’s journey to adulthood through the cauldron of war.

"On 23 December 1916 HMAT Demosthenes sailed for Portsmouth with 150 young men destined to reinforce the 26th Battalion. They were the 18th group of reinforcements to sail and the 2nd Lieutenant was a young commercial traveller from Ganges St West End called Bill Acworth. My father.

Dad never spoke of the war, except to say that a lot of poor buggers got treated like dogs. He kept no diaries and, whilst I’m sure he wrote home, I have never seen any of the letters. Dad died when I was a child and, though I loved him, I simply did not understand why he was the way he was – a tough old bird, impatient of humbug, infuriated by incompetence – he had no time for fools. So, I decided to look for him – to try to understand how he became the man he was, formed on a fundamental level in the cauldron of war."

Originally produced as a series of podcasts, this special event is a deeply moving live reading of the script by the actors who recorded it, accompanied by a lyrical and evocative soundscape.